22 Mar 2023; MEMO: Jordan's former deputy prime minister said on Tuesday that the Kingdom has to prepare for a "real confrontation" with Israel, Quds Press has reported. Mamdouh Al-Abadi made his comment in response to remarks by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in which he claimed that there is no such nation as the Palestinians as he stood at a podium decorated with a map of "Greater Israel" that included Jordan.
"Israel has to apologise officially for [Smotrich's] remarks," Al-Abadi told Quds Press. He called the Jordanian government's response to the remarks as weak. "We have to get ready for a real confrontation with Israel. We have to be ready for compulsory conscription because the agenda of all Israeli parties includes occupying Jordan."
The former minister even suggested that ties with the occupation state should be severed because Smotrich's remarks "are the mercy shot to the head of the Wadi Araba Peace Treaty."
According to the former head of the Royal Court of Jordan, Jawad Anani, "The future of relations between Jordan and Israel will continue failing as long as Benjamin Netanyahu is prime minister." For the first time, he added, the foreign ministry in Amman has classified remarks about Jordan and Palestine by an Israeli minister as contradicting the peace deal.
Anani said that Netanyahu should apologise officially for Smotrich's remarks as he is one of the ministers in his coalition government. He also called for Jordan to ask the US and the EU to take strong positions about what the extreme right-winger said, because it threatens the peace treaty signed by late King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994.
